This invention relates generally to a system and method for managing the use of energy and in particular to a system and method for automatically managing the use of energy for a user.
The problem of energy management and energy cost management has always been an issue for many commercial users who operate large physical plants (i.e., facilities and/or factories) because of the large amount of energy which is consumed by the facilities or factories. It is desirable to manage and analyze the energy consumption of the physical plant in order to reduce the total energy costs of the physical plant. The energy management process may involve many steps such as, for example, purchasing energy from another less expensive source or adjusting the energy usage of the facility to off-peak times when energy rates are lower. A conventional system for energy management may be a computer system housed in the basement of a facility or factory, that permits a person to view the energy usage of various equipment within that particular facility and makes changes to the energy usage based on information received at the computer system.
The problem of energy management is especially complex for large entities, such as corporations, universities, municipalities, etc., which may have a physical plant with many different facilities or factories located at various different locations. With a conventional energy management approach, each facility owned by the large entity may independently manage its own energy. Thus, for a large entity, there must be a conventional energy management system associated with each facility or factory, which greatly increases the overall cost of conventional energy management. In addition, each energy management system may use a slightly different data structure for the data being generated so that these multiple energy management systems cannot be easily integrated into a single energy management system for the entire physical plant.
In most conventional systems, the task of energy management is separated from the task of facilities management. Thus, each facility generally has both an energy management system and a facilities management system. To reduce the costs of the management of the facility, it is desirable to integrate these two systems into a single system.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a single integrated energy and facilities management system which connects a physical plant with multiple, possibly geographically dispersed, facilities or factories together so that the task of energy and facilities management may be accomplished at a single central location. The single control location may be remote from all of the facilities. It is also desirable to provide an energy and facilities management system which provides the user of the system with a simulation of the facilities being managed so that the user may view the physical plant without actually being at the site. Thus, it is desirable to provide an energy management system and method which provides the above advantages and avoids the problems with the conventional systems, and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.
A web-bridged system and method are provided wherein a user that logs into a local energy management server is able to gather information from one or more other remote systems including geographically distributed systems. In particular, the web-bridge device may store the user""s username and password when the user logs into the local system. Then, when the user desires to gather data from another remote system, the web-bridge device may, assuming that the user is authorized to access the other remote system, send the user""s username and password to the remote system and thus perform an automatic login process. To manage the users, there may be web-bridge transfer tables.
Thus, in accordance with one aspect of the invention, an apparatus for sharing energy management data over a computer network is provided. The system may have one or more energy management systems that each collect energy management data and one or more web bridge devices wherein each web bridge device connects an energy management system to the computer network so that a predetermined configuration of energy management systems is formed. The system further comprises a system for authenticating a user onto a first energy management system using an identification wherein the user accesses the system using a client system, a system for caching the identification of the user, and means for automatically authenticating the user to a second energy management system in the predetermined configuration by providing the cached identification to the other energy management system so that energy management data is shared between the energy management systems in the configuration.